Background in bullet points

[seasonofsamurai]

Details about Shinobu's past are scant, so LOTS of headcanon here. Sticking this here for reference before her paradisa wiki page gets deleted.

• Born, raised, lived in Santa Destroy, California, USA all her life.
• Only child to "Master" and Wanda Jacobs.
• Father inherited a small, struggling dojo from his father and financed it through his day job as a businessman.
• He shot some low-budget kendou (Japanese sword fighting) instructional videos (think camcorder on a tripod), then rented and sold them out through Beef Head Videos and other nearby video stores, provided the Jacobs got part of the earnings.
• Videos were a hit. They eventually attracted the attention of a production company, and they struck a deal to remake the originals and produce more tapes. Master Jacobs' success only skyrocketed. Eventually, he didn't need to work his day job and concentrated on teaching at the dojo, which enjoyed increased membership, and putting out more videos on a wider market scale.
• Somewhere down the line, one Travis Touchdown started collecting and practicing off these videos.
• The Jacobs family became very popular with the patriarch's rising fame. Who's to say how many of those people could honestly be called friends? Money and glory have a lot of influence. But Scarlet didn't realize this right away. All the kids in school and the neighborhood liked her, and playing with them was fun. As far as she knew, they were nice people.
• She trained with her father since about preschool. She didn't use a live steel blade until she was about ten, however.
• She was clearly a Daddy's Girl. Not that she didn't care for her mother, but she spent so much time with her father it was hard not to develop that special father/daughter relationship. She looked up to him, learned everything she knows and values even now. Basically: Honor is everything.
• Her father gave her the moniker "Shinobu," which they only used in training. It means either "to recall" or "to endure."
• Three Girl Rhumba's Sword was Master Jacobs' blade. He hoped to pass it down to Scarlet on her eighteenth birthday. She would receive it five years too soon.
• She found him after school one day in two pieces at the hands of a shadowed man with a beam katana. Her father's blood and entrails stained the living room.
• She didn't get a good look at the killer. She was too horrified by her father's mutilated corpse, and the sneaky bastard got away before she could see him properly. She still doesn't know who the killer is to this day.
• Wanda was at work when she got the police call. She immediately took the day off to be with her daughter and mourn her husband's death.
• Investigations revealed nothing about the killer's identity or motivation. But this was Santa Destroy, the murder capital of the world. Unless you were immediately related to a death, no one really cared to look into murder cases anymore.
• The Jacobs fortune was enough to support Wanda and Scarlet, but the matriarch was tasked with managing his properties and assets. Between her job and minding business, mother and daughter spent increasingly less time together.
• Or maybe it was conscious decision on both ends. Scarlet reminded Wanda too much of her husband, and the young teenager was losing trust in people and becoming wary of getting too close anymore.
• For the most part Scarlet kept to herself since then. Any of her "friends" could turn around and stab her in the back. The only person she could completely trust was herself. Her one constant companion? Three Girl Rhumba's Sword.
• When she was about sixteen, though, she begrudgingly let one boy through her defenses. His name isn't important anymore. He was an annoying bugger, really. But something about his persistence endeared her, and they got close.
• Until her tried to kill her, that is. Something about her supposedly being in some UAA thing, and his drive to rank Number One. In defending herself, she ended up offing him. As panicked and shocked she was by the incident, something felt right about playing God with her sword.
• That's when Sylvia Christel came into the scene. She explained to Scarlet that the United Assassins Association was an organization of sorts of killers aiming to be the Number One ranked assassin. Why the boy thought Scarlet was in the UAA, who knew? Maybe he was just an idiot.
• Scarlet didn't see what else this UAA shit had to do with her. Sylvia offered membership as a way to possibly find her father's murderer. "I can help you get even."
• So she took the opportunity. With the boy's death, she assumed his Number Nineteen rank and officially became the assassin Shinobu.
• Hiding her double life was difficult. The UAA wasn't cheap, and Shinobu wasn't going to dip into her savings account to pay entrance fees and tip off her mother. Instead, she took on several odd jobs to earn the money, and it took time to get it between school, home, and work. She also had to make sure anyone privy to her profession stayed silent -- permanently.
• By eighteen, she made Number Eight, and some guy named Travis Touchdown wanted her spot. Everything was fine, until he whipped out the beam katana. At last, she could finally exact her revenge on the bastard that killed her father.
• Too bad he beat her. Oh, and wasn't actually Master Jacobs' killer. Remember how he collected all of the master's tapes? He idolized the man and saw him as a mentor. Like hell he'd ever want to kill him. Or Shinobu, as much as she begged him to kill her honorably. He did offer her a rematch, though. "I'll fight you anytime, anywhere. Until then, I'll be waiting."